In the textile industry in general, a problem which is experienced in particular is that of eliminating the so-called tail end of a reel, that is, the portion of yarn which is not wound and hangs from a reel which has just been wound. This problem arises wherever reels of wound yarn are produced, regardless of the nature of the yarn in question.
The current technological trend is in fact towards the automation of the removal of the reels from the frames on which they are wound or from apparatus which winds a single reel.
The automatic removal of the reels is hindered in practice by the their tail ends which risk being caught up, causing undesired unwinding of the yarn which has just been wound.
Moreover, the unwound lengths of yarn, which are often quite long, may become wound around rotating parts of machinery, compromising its operation and, in any case, necessitating manual intervention by an operator to remove the lengths of yarn from the parts on which they are wound or entangled.
These unwound lengths of yarn thus clearly constitute a serious obstacle to any automatic handling and/or transportation of the reels.
This problem is solved with the use of monitoring and possibly a manual removal operation carried out when the winding of a reel is completed and/or when it is removed from the respective winding frame.
An automatic system which grips the end of the yarn and winds it onto a portion of cop projecting laterally from the wound reel has also been proposed.
However, this operation does not involve any actual fixing and the yarn therefore often unwinds from its position, again becoming a nuisance. The presence of operators ready to intervene manually in case of need therefore remains essential.
The technical problem upon which the present invention is based consists in devising a method of finishing reels of wound yarn which overcomes the problems mentioned above with reference to the prior art.